Ten Commandments

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How come the Traditional Catechetical Fomula of the Ten Commandments listed in the Catechism omits the 2nd Commandment and splits the 10th Commandment in two? Should we be concerned?:

Catechism (beginning after paragraph 2051 ending around 2550) Bible
  1. I am the Lord your God: you shall not have strange Gods before me 1st
  2. You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain. 3rd
  3. Remember to keep holy the Lord’s Day. 4th
  4. Honor your father and your mother 5th
  5. You shall not kill 6th
  6. You shall not commit adultery 7th
  7. You shall not steal 8th
  8. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor 9th
  9. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife 10th
  10. Your shall not covet your neighbor’s goods 10th
Bible 2nd Commandment
Exodus 20:4 "You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. 5 You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, 6 but showing love to a thousand {generations} of those who love me and keep my commandments.
Deuteronomy 5: 8 "You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. 9 You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, 10 but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments.

Bible 10th Commandment
Exodus 20:17 “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his manservant or maidservant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.”
Deuteronomy 5:21 “You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife. You shall not set your desire on your neighbor’s house or land, his manservant or maidservant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.”
 
God wrote an awful lot on those stone tablets (the writing must’ve been tiny 😃 ) and Moses in writing Exodus and Deuteronomy didn’t exactly tell us how they were numbered - or for that matter that there were meant to be ten, as opposed to eleven or twelve or twenty!

So the way they are numbered and ordered is a matter that permits of differing opinions. Now it should be obvious that coveting someone’s spouse is a very different kind of sin indeed to coveting their material possessions. It is a sin that comes under the heading of lust rather than avarice. So certainly deserves to be distinguished.

It doesn’t seem you read the section of the Catechism thoroughly - if at all. Even a casual skim would’ve revealed that it recites the First Commandment in full thus just before par 2084:

"ARTICLE 1
THE FIRST COMMANDMENT
Code: 
I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods before me. **You shall not make for yourself a graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them or serve them.3**"
And goes on - in par 2112-2114 (clearly and helpfully HEADED ‘Idolatry’) to examine further the meaning of the sentence of scripture I bolded. So your claim that the Catechism ignores this part of the decalogue in its teaching on the commandments baseless. I don’t know where in the CCC the list you’ve produced is contained, I can’t see it anywhere.

The Catechism doesn’t ignore that sentence at all, it simply includes it as part of the First commandment. And why not - is not idolatry the act of ‘having another god before Me’? How many other ways are there to ‘have another god before me’ than worshipping idols? Even if those idols be not persons (ie making money or power your idol and so on)
 
To say some of what was said above…

The Catholic Bible nor the Catechism removes any commandmant. Its there for all to see.

Traditionally to make them easy to remember they were condensed. My understanding is the way the Church condenses the commandmants into 10 is the way St Augitine did it and also the same way the Jews do it too.

COMMANDMENT 1
1 And the Lord spoke all these words:
2 I am the Lord thy God, who brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.
3 Thou shalt not have strange gods before me.4 Thou shalt not make to thyself a graven thing, nor the likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or in the earth beneath, nor of those things that are in the waters under the earth.
5 Thou shalt not adore them, nor serve them: I am the Lord thy God, mighty, jealous, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me:
6 And showing mercy unto thousands to them that love me, and keep my commandments.

Traditonally polytheism usually involved the worshiping of statutes etc as God(s). That’s why the condensed version simply says no strange gods. Nothing wrong with an image by the way, just as long as it’s not graven. A crucifix for example is not graven, Paul says we proclaim Christ crucified. Catholic images point us to God.

COMMANDMENT 2
7 Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain: for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that shall take the name of the Lord his God in vain.

COMMANDMENT 3
8 Remember that thou keep holy the sabbath day.
9 Six days shalt thou labour, and shalt do all thy works.
10 But on the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God: thou shalt do no work on it, thou nor thy son, nor thy daughter, nor thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy beast, nor the stranger that is within thy gates.
11 For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, and the sea, and all things that are in them, and rested on the seventh day: therefore the Lord blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it.

COMMANDMENT 4
12 ¶ Honour thy father and thy mother, that thou mayst be long lived upon the land which the Lord thy God will give thee.

COMMANDMENT 5
13 Thou shalt not kill.

COMMANDMENT 6
14 Thou shalt not commit adultery.

COMMANDMENT 7
15 Thou shalt not steal.

COMMANDMENT 8
16 Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.

COMMANDMENT 9 and 10
17 Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house; neither shalt thou desire his wife, nor his servant, nor his handmaid, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor any thing that is his.

Nine and Ten are traditionally separate as though they relate, they are also very separate issues. Not everyone who covets his neighbours goods covets his wife too, or visa-versa, but if you had a graven image, chances are you would have worshiped it as a God.

As you can see, by puting 16 verses into 10 short points, even if you whack in the graven images bit, one still leaves a chunk out, for example not doing work on the Lord’s day - keeping it holy doesn’t necessarily imply not working.
 
The Commandments weren’t spelled out 1 through 10 in the Bible like anyone has them. What we have done is summarize and organize them into an easily understood, 10 Commandments.

Scooby 🙂

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